Lewis Wolpert: on belief

Why do 70 per cent of Americans believe in angels? Why does every society around the world have a religious tradition of some sort? Why do more than one in ten British scientists touch wood? What makes people believe in things when all the evidence points to the contrary?

Is it because belief is an important survival tool? Has it been selected for in the course of human evolution? That's the argument being put forward in Lewis Wolpert's book Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

Lewis Wolpert is a scientist, an emeritus professor of biology as applied to medicine at Univeristy College London. He was also, for four years, chair of the committee on the Public Understanding of Science. And with this commitment to the public he has written a number of books, including A passion for Science, The Unnatural Nature of Science and Malignant Sadness, which came out of a BBC TV series about depression.